Press Release: TWO GENTLEMEN* OF VERONA

Hollywood, CA (Feb. 21st, 2018) — Join Coin & Ghost for a gender-flipped Two Gentlemen* of Verona in the Ruby Theatre, March 16th – April 8th.

The second production of Coin & Ghost’s inaugural season, Two Gentlemen* of Verona follows the story of Valentine and Proteus — two gentle(wo)men who begin the play as best friends. As Valentine travels to Milan, Proteus remains in Verona to woo her first love, Julius. But a complex dynamic soon emerges, as Valentine, too, falls in love — with a young man named Silvius — and Proteus (while on a visit to Milan), becomes enamored with him as well.

The young company will be eschewing the theme of winsome romance traditionally explored in Shakespeare’s comedy, to instead explore the politics of sex and gender as well as the dynamics of power and privilege inherent within that play. Directed by C&G Managing Director Marguerite French, Coin & Ghost’s Two Gents* tackles one of The Bard’s many “problem plays” in a subversive, timely light.

“With consent and sex permeating the news today, we feel compelled to present a work that addresses the often-ignored problems in a widely revered classic,” says Director Marguerite French. Zach Davidson, the company’s Artistic Director, has had this interpretation of the play in mind for a while. “Two Gents* is a text that is intrinsically tied to a heavily-gendered power dynamic,” he says. “In fact, that’s the structure that the entire show sits upon. By exploring the text specifically through this lens, we have an opportunity to expose some of the machinery at work.”

The play will use kabuki aesthetics to create a familiar yet abstract world, raising questions of identity and social norms, as well as what it means to conflate power and gender. French asks, “What would modern life be like if men’s bodies and agency were limited in the way that women’s are? This is the type of question that we hope will spark curiosity and deep discussion.”

For the production, French will be teaming up with a cast of six, including C&G Associate Artistic Directors, Elisa Rosin and Kendall Johnson, as well as Colbert Alembert, Sims Holland, Kathleen Leary, and Victoria Martinez. They will be joined in the collaboration by designers Niki Armato, Yuki Izumihara, and Hannah Athena Lawton.

The show follows closely on the heels of C&G’s widely-lauded World Premiere, Fortunate Son: A Faust Myth, and continues advancing the company’s own unique brand of “Remixed Mythologies.” As with all their productions, opening weekend will be entirely Pay-What-You-Can.

For questions or interest in attending a rehearsal, please contact Zach Davidson at zach@coinandghost.org.

About Coin & Ghost

Launched in the Summer of 2017, Coin & Ghost is a Los Angeles-based theatre company known for its imaginative remixing of known mythologies. C&G defines mythology as “any set of stories that simultaneously SHAPES and IS SHAPED BY a culture.” So Traditional Greek and Roman myths count, sure, as do any culture’s creation myths. But when viewed through this lens, Shakespeare has a clear mythology to it, as do comic books, Tennessee Williams, and other folklore. The company uses these stories as a base, a structure, even as a playground — but not as a rulebook. Each project begins on the well-worn road of a known mythology, and then branches off on its own unique, wild path.

Coin & Ghost is dedicated to adventurous and accessible theatre. Their mission is to use cultural mythology as a base for creative works and educational programs that inspire empathy and imagination, throughout the community and around the world.

The name of the company reflects the central idea of their work — to juxtapose the PERMANENT (what is accepted, expected, established, conventional, ritual) with the UNSTABLE (what is ridiculous, surprising, experimental, bizarre, and eccentric). A COIN is, quite literally, a known quantity. It is a physical representation of stored value, a token of culturally-determined worth, and an accepted, established method of trade. A GHOST, on the other hand, defies universal understanding. If it exists at all, it is ephemeral. Volatile. An echo of what once was, whether painful, sentimental, warm, or dangerous. This interplay between the familiar and the unexpected is the core of what Coin & Ghost does.

The company features creators and performers from several of LA’s finest theatre programs — including CalArts, USC, and UCLA — and is a proud member of the LA Stage Alliance.

About The Director

Marguerite French is a recent graduate of the Interdisciplinary MFA program at UCLA’s school of Theatre, Film, and Television, where she co-produced and starred in the Rabbit Bandini film, Death, and directed the short, Intimate Beauty. Her first role after graduation was “Alison” in Francis Ford Coppola’s Distant Vision. As the 2015 Cirque du Soleil Directing/Marketing Fellow, she directed a commercial for the Cirque production “Baz”, helped conceive the social media campaign #cirqueway, and learned to hang by her ankles from the aerial tissu. As an actor in New York, she studied with JoAnne Akalaitis, Jim Calder, Wynn Handman, and William Esper. She is a proud alumnus of Bard College.